Facebook relaunches Google AdWords killer Atlas for targeted ads

Monday was the start of Advertising Week in New York City, and Facebook offered a serious launch in the tech world, particularly the ad space within internet, and mobilized ads. The announcement was deliberate, and it means Google now has direct competition in the ads arena.

Facebook’s platform is called Atlas, and it is targeting everything digital. This is an announcement that people have been waiting on for a very, very, long time. And Facebook has finally delivered in the biggest way they possibly could.

Brands will now have the opportunity to use Facebook’s massive amount of collected data to target ads on varying sites around the internet.

Even more potent is the fact that the ads won’t be limited to sites, specifically on computers. We’re talking about something much larger. And although Atlas isn’t a brand new product or name, Facebook had made it clear they would go in this direction all the way back in January.

The launch of Atlas – which was previously owned by Microsoft and acquired through a deal last year – means Facebook is ready to take the fight directly to Google. After the acquisition, the head of Atlas said in a blog post that they rebuilt the platform “from the ground up” and the goal was to simply make the experience easier for the advertiser to follow the consumer whether they’re on a desktop, mobile phone, or anything in-between.

The launch though has already seen some major players in the advertising game jump on board with Atlas. Facebook said in an announcement that they would begin providing ads for Pepsi and Intel after a contract was finalized and signed with Omnicom.

But, that leaves a bit of the question as to where Google stands in all of this. Google+ would have been able to construct a system similar to this – which was focused on people and users – like Facebook, but with the relative failure that was Google+ the social network, it wasn’t able to boost its data, and improve the ads they offered, and the audience they were being offered to.

It would appear now though that Facebook has a very legitimate chance of taking out Google at advertising, a place where few would have thought they ever could be beat. However, Atlas gives Facebook an advantage, and the fact that they will be offering ads across platforms, and creating a one-stop-shop for advertising, and that is entirely possible thanks to Atlas.

Serving information, data, and ads across multiple platforms though isn’t new for the social network giant. They’ve been in the advertising game for a while, and they have plenty of experience – and now the platform to execute those ads across multiple layers of devices, rather than be one-dimensional in an arena that needs a multi-dimensional player to provide ads across platforms.